Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Civilians Trained To Reclaim Ukraine Minefields

MYRNA DOLYNA, Ukraine —In an overgrown minefield, Yulia Boiko kneels down and starts gardening. Years of war have caused weeds to grow high in the abandoned croplands of eastern Ukraine.

A mine warning is displayed at a checkpoint on the contact line between pro-Moscow rebels and Ukrainian troops.

Clad in flak jacket and face mask, she uses shears to snip back sun-scorched scrub, removing vegetation one careful inch at a time to avoid hidden tripwires.

A small patch of earth is eventually exposed.

Boiko stands up, then scans the ground with her metal detector to ensure it is clear.

She repeats the painstaking process – one pace farther into a 600-acre field where wheat and sunflowers once grew.

The United Nations reports that this Donbass region is becoming one of the most mined areas in the world.

Anti-vehicle mines in particular kill more people here than anywhere else in the world, researchers say – surpassing the numbers of victims in Syria, Yemen or battlefields across Africa.

“Nobody knows how big the problem is,” said Henry Leach, the head of the Danish Demining Group’s program in Ukraine.

“We just know it’s big.”

Land mines, booby traps and unexploded ordnance are sown across tens of thousands of acres – much of it off-limits because the fighting is still going on and because of obstructions raised by officials.

RIDDLED WITH EXPLOSIVES

The Halo Trust, a humanitarian mine-clearance organization, estimates that land mines have caused 1,796 casualties in eastern Ukraine – among them 238 civilians killed and another 491 injured – since the start of the war in 2014.

The rate of casualties from mines and unexploded ordnance has increased over the years, a trend likely to continue as displaced families return to areas where fighting has subsided, now riddled with explosive remnants.

In addition to the bloodshed, entire communities suffer.

Both sides have laid land mines, denying people use of land for crops and livestock, and endangering those who gather firewood.

Most minefields are around the front line, where military commanders typically restrict demining.

“There’s almost a blanket ban on survey and clearance in those areas,” said Patrick Thompson, operations manager for the Halo Trust in Ukraine.

“If we want access, we have to apply to the [Defense Ministry]. … Most commonly, we never get a response.”

And banned from separatist-held territory, international mine-clearance organizations have no idea of the scale of the problem there.

Eastern Ukraine is “rapidly becoming one of the most mined areas in the world,” the U.N. deputy chief of humanitarian affairs, Ursula Mueller, said recently, “which, if not addressed, will stall reconstruction and development for many years to come.”